


Unravelling

by lindsey_grissom



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: F/M, Set before the end of the series, pre-wedding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-21 16:42:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20696732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindsey_grissom/pseuds/lindsey_grissom
Summary: Mrs Hughes suffers a slight wardrobe malfunction. Luckily Mr Carson is nearby to lend a hand.Set between Series 5 and 6.





	Unravelling

It's not often that Mrs Hughes has to take such a hands-on approach to any of the housework these days; there might not be room in the budget for a fleet of footman of a Mr Carson approved size, and perhaps there are more options out there today for young ladies than when she was a lass, but a house like Downton still attracts a steady stream of housemaids; and with a few noticeable exceptions, they've held on to most of their girls the last few years.

So while Mr Carson might bemoan having only two or three footman with any regularity, Mrs Hughes finds that for the most part, she still has enough maids about the place to suit. Certainly with the war long over, the work load is nowhere near that of those trying times.

So it is rare that a mid-February morning might find her dragging a carpet down from the attics on Her Ladyship's request.

Rarer still that she'd be attempting such a feat by herself.

Yet, with an unexpectedly late flu season upon them and most of the staff laid up in their attic rooms beneath layered blankets and cold compresses, there's little else to be done but for Mrs Hughes to dig her elbows in on a less supervisory basis. The house must carry on, after all, even if this endeavour is revealed to be another of Her Ladyship's fevered desires.

Like the blue silk lampshade she'd insisted she must have at her bedside last night.

Despite the weight in her arms as she attempts to manoeuvre the bulky rug along the corridor towards the next set of stairs - each awkward unsteady step taking her slowly closer to the library - Mrs Hughes offers the thought of Lady Grantham's increasingly bizarre requests a smile. It's only that such commands are _so_uncharacteristic of the woman, that Mrs Hughes has been so placid at the inconvenience of them all.

Or perhaps, she thinks with another smile; this one somewhat softer, she might feel almost as generous were it the blessed Lady Mary making such outrageous demands on her rather limited time.

She has been in unnaturally good spirits herself these past two months and just a thing might be possible.

Thankfully, the young Ladies took themselves and the children to the Dower House at the first hint of a sneeze. Mrs Hughes will admit to having shared more than a few private chuckles with Mr Carson whilst they attempted to imagine Mr Spratt's reaction to this turn of events.

That was a week ago now and with the weather turning, Mrs Hughes is hopeful that they are beginning to see themselves emerging on the other side of the sickness. She is more thankful than she can express that Mr Carson and herself managed somehow to avoid any symptoms of their own.

Coming up beside an open window she takes a moment to rest and gather herself, leaning the carpet up against her front to free a hand to wipe at the slightly damp hair sticking to her forehead.

Her arm protests the action, even as she is forced to make a stumbling step back as the rolled rug makes to slide down her front completely. Half pinned beneath the thing she admits with a wry curl of her lip that she is perhaps getting too old for this.

Not that she'll let on as such, not when she can already hear Mr Carson's voice in her head, chiding her for not asking for help.

In fact, twisting slightly to the side, the carpet catching at her for a moment before something pulls free, she believes she actually _can_ hear the man coming up the stairs now.

She has a brief, fleeting thought to dash into a bedroom to hide before good sense returns and she straightens up beneath the carpet, turning to face his approach with her chin tipped high and her arm clasping the carpet to her side.

* * *

There are few things that Mr Carson finds more pleasing than a household that runs well even amidst a minor crisis.

Lately, he has found this list of alternates to be expanding in a rather biased direction. That is to say, biased towards the features and actions of a particularly fiery housekeeper who has agreed to become his wife, at some future date they have not as yet, reached an agreement on.

As he has had many occasion in the weeks since the Christmas Eve party to not only look upon and acknowledge some of Mrs Hughes' finest qualities - the new twist of her hair, the brightness of her eyes, the curves and contours of her silhouette as she stood looking out across the moonlit lake and he stood looking across at her, for example - but to his surprise also to witness that rarest of occurrences; a helpful Mr Barrow, Mr Carson finds himself in quite the liveliest of moods as he heads towards the housekeeper's parlour in the hope of inducing her to share a brief rest between meals and a cup of tea.

Finding her missing from the room dampens his spirits but it's the news from Andy, coughing and spluttering the last of his cold into an overused handkerchief, that she'd been last seen heading into the attics alone to find the old Russian rug, that has him thrusting a clean white square of cloth at the footman and storming his way up the back stairs and through the house, his cheerful mood most definitely broken.

Footsteps heavy on each step he wonders if there is any other woman in existence who could drive him quite as mad as she does on a daily basis. He is absolutely certain there is none to be found with as much bloody-minded stubbornness in their bones as in those of one Elsie Hughes.

Turning sharply on the second landing, he enters the corridor and finds himself pulling to an abrupt and complete stop at the sight of her.

It is not, though were matters different it surely would be, the way that the air from the open window plays with the loose strands of hair that have fallen from her pins, that stops him so dead. Nor is it the light of the almost-midday sun glowing about her frame in such a way that he finds himself at once both desperate to never look away from her and equally so to move himself towards her and clasp her tight.

His stillness has also nothing to do with the way her chin is tipped up as though in challenge, whilst her teeth nibble at her bottom lip. Nor with the absurd sight of her lithe figure dwarfed by a perilously leaning roll of carpet.

No, a better man might have been arrested by any one of these occurrences alone but Mr Carson to his shame, finds his attention caught and held far lower than her lips or the raised hand that clasps the rug.

Caught at the rise and fall of plump pale skin, lightly flushed and dusted with a delightful scattering of freckles, and framed by both the fine satin and lace of what can only be her corset and the fallen neckline of her familiar black dress.

"Mr Carson, are you quite well?"

Even her voice does not grab his instant attention as it always has before.

He finds he cannot look away, even when he himself can no longer deny that the moment and his silence have dragged too long.

They have been good, his fiancée and himself; they are not young people in the first spring of affection without control or propriety. They have been good to content themselves with the brush of fingers as they move about her parlour and his pantry of an evening, a kiss to his cheek before they returned to the Christmas party and a kiss to her forehead when she fell asleep waiting for him to complete his rounds last Thursday night. Content to wait until their agreement, their promise, is made formal, whenever that might eventually be.

He has, he realises now with her skin on display to him, heaving slightly as she moves to lean the carpet against the wall and step closer to him, been a damned fool to think himself content to wait more than the three weeks it would take to read the banns, when this, she, _Mrs Hughes_ could be available to him far more fully than he has allowed himself to imagine.

"Mr Carson, have you caught the fever?"

Her voice comes as her fingers settle on his brow and though he still cannot tear his eyes away from her, he is shaken from his stupor enough to bring a hand up to the edge of her dress where it lies folded, utterly failing at its job of covering her from prying eyes.

Eyes such as his own.

Her breath catches at his touch and he can both feel and see how her chest stills with it, her flush deepening as she looks down to where his fingers are.

"That's what caught." She says, some great revelation lost to him. "I must have torn a button or two on that damn rug."

She slips her fingers between his to take hold of the fabric of her dress and with a jerk steps away again from his reach.

"Thank heavens it was you who found me, Mr Carson." She says and as her skin is covered once more by her hand holding the dress in place, he finds he can finally move.

Half a step brings her back into the reach of his arms, her body pressed to his as he takes her bitten lip against his own.

Thank heavens indeed, he thinks as she first stiffens in surprise and then wraps a hand about his neck, the carpet forgotten and his mood improving once again.

He shall speak to His Lordship about taking an afternoon to visit the church. She is right, he is now able and very willing to concede; they have waited long enough.

**End.**


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